Well, in principle I think a Middle Eastern WC is a good idea. There's never been one there, they play and love football, and football has a history of building bridges between different peoples and being a-political, so where better to have one?

And as I've said before, I think the weather issue has been overplayed. The WC has frequently been hosted in extremely hot and dry places. One of the California venues in 1994 was near the place on earth where the hottest ever temperature was recorded.

However, it's a shame the awarding of this WC was a result of obvious bribery, and that the handling of the weather issue has been so cack-handed. It's still a decade away, and yet it's already become a disaster, when it could have been one of the more progressive tournaments.

mcmonkeyplc wrote:
I wonder what the chances of Uefa leaving Fifa are? That would certainly fuck them over.

With regards to specifically the 2022 WC, I can't really see what beef UEFA can have with it. If anyone's going to walk it'll be the "Oceanic" equivalent, and I suspect FIFA's response would be "lol, AWFAY??".

I dunno, them furrins quite like playing for their country. And sadly, the PL rely on FIFA - if they ban players from representing their country, then we won't get the same level of player in the league, the league will suffer etc and before you know it, it's the 1980s all over again. Or the Packer World Cricket Series in SA.

Edit: I'm conflating 2 issues there. There was the Packer WSC and then the SA Rebel tours.

Winter World Cup sounds miserable, one of the highlights of the WC has always been sitting in beer gardens and watching on a big screen. FIFA are a bunch of corrupt shitheads, there is absolutely no way that Qatar's bid should have beat the others'. Nothing about Qatar says 'spirit of football' to me.

My personal feeling is that of the countries in the shortlist, Qatar was actually the right choice. USA, South Korea and Japan have all had pretty recent (and aren't exactly giants of football either), so the only other real fair option was Australia, and they've had less representation at the WC than Middle Eastern countries have over the years.

As I say, I think it's right to have a Middle Eastern WC. It's just become a disaster how they've gone about getting it, and now how they're planning to host it.

A middle eastern country should never host the World Cup, just like England would never host the Winter Olympics. They do not have the weather conditions to host the tournament. There will be huge legal ramifications out of this as already threatened by Australia. All of this is before you consider that Qatar only has one major city, is an alcohol-free zone and their attitude towards women and homosexuals.

USA was clearly the best choice from the countries bidding followed by Australia.

Australia would have been a much better option, football is really popular over there and growing steadily all the time, Qatar have never qualified for the WC and I can't think of any famous Qatari players. Australia is already very tourist friendly and is a very multicultural country.

The middle East is not the most stable of areas and I think that making plans 10 years in the future for any country in that region is being a bit optimistic.

I have no doubt that Qatar can build their stadiums, especially with their forced labour and the money they get from people trafficking, my worry is how a country of 1.9 million, that flogs people for drinking alcohol and premarital sex, is going to cope with hundreds and thousands of football fans from around the world looking to have a good time.